More Deadly Than the Male

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"When the Himalayan peasant meets the he-bear in his pride, He shouts to scare the monster, who will often turn aside. But the she-bear thus accosted rends the peasant tooth and nail. For the female of the species is more deadly than the male."

Remember, this does not describe a situation where men are weak and women are strong. This is when women are depicted as far more ruthless, more cunning and ultimately more bloodthirsty than their Spear Counterparts, even though—or maybe because—they are physically smaller and weaker. While males are visibly larger and more aggressive, they tend more toward forms, codes and displays of power; meanwhile, the wily female bothers not with such things.

This is the precursor to the modern Action Girl, but nonetheless can carry Unfortunate Implications by characterizing women as less morally upstanding than men and by playing into the "women are crazy" stereotype — in fact, the Trope Namer (Rudyard Kipling's poem "The Female of the Species") cites this trope as a reason that women shouldn't be trusted with power. The difference between the modern Action Girl and this trope is kind of like the difference between a Brave Scot and a Violent Glaswegian.

Examples:

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Anime & Manga

Slayers No one is more deadly than Lina Inverse, except maybe her older sister.

Kill la Kill There are six notable female characters. Two of them are so powerful that all of the most powerful men in the world work for them, Ryuko's goal is to take the other two women down. Gamagoori completely bends his will for Satsuki and Mako out of sincere respect.

Gintama: There's almost no man in this series who hasn't had his ass repeatedly kicked by a woman for anything from a minor infraction to actual combat. Kondou loses to Otae, Tatsuma loses to Mutsu, everyone but Okita & Kamui have lost to Kagura, Gintoki has lost to every woman except Sarutobi and Ana, and few men can match Nobume with a sword.

In a flashback in the first episode of Moshidora, Minami, at bat in the bottom of the ninth with the scores tied in a junior baseball game, makes a wild swing at the first pitch that convinces everyone she is a hopeless batter. It turns out that her wild swing was done intentionally to lull the pitcher into a false sense of security, and on his next pitch she is able to get a hit and score the winning run.

Annie Leonhart from Attack on Titan, a young woman noted for her exceptional fighting skills because of her small stature. She sometimes jokes that she's a "delicate maiden", but her fighting style is primarily meant to remove the advantage a larger, stronger opponent has over her. She utilizes many kicks, throws, and grappling moves to quickly disable stronger foes, often using their own size and strength against them. This extends to her Titan form as well. While other Shifters primarily rely on brute force, she uses her superior speed and agility to take down her targets.

Naomi Misora of Death Note is this way in comparison to her husband; while Raye is barely a probem, Light is in some real trouble when she decides to avenge him. Though Light manages to take advantage of her grief and lack of resources to get her out of the game before that happens, her death leads L to him and sets in motion the events leading to his ultimate destruction. The author himself admitted that, if Naomi had lived, there would have been no game. She has enough intellect to come to key realizations, without the issues that bind L, namely L's unwillingness to go for the kill.

Even more so in Another Note, where Naomi's singlehanded solving of the case impresses even L.

In YuYu Hakusho, Hiei planned to commit genocide on the Ice Maidens for, among other reasons, throwing him down a cliff as a newborn infant and driving his mother (an Ice Maiden who had conceived him through sex rather than their species's normal parthenogenesis) to suicide, but eventually settled for Cruel Mercy. His twin sister Yukina (the only Ice Maiden he planned to spare) is searching for him to remind him he promised to commit the genocide.

Hildegard von Mariendorf in Legend of Galactic Heroes is the deadliest woman in existence, as Reinhard says that her methods can just be as underhanded as Oberstein's, and the fact that she personally ends the war.

Adiane from Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann is The Smurfette Principle of the Four Beastmen Generals, and is much more psychotic and violent than her male colleagues. Using her mecha, she beats down most of Team Dai-Gurren's entire brigade by herself.

Out of all of Batman's associates, the ones he has the least control over have been his female ones: Oracle (the original Batgirl, who was completely independent of him and considers herself his equal), Catwoman (who skirts the line between vigilante and criminal, and has no code against killing), Spoiler (who became a superhero largely to apprehend her criminal father and then became Batman's student), Batwoman (more loyal to the symbol than the person) and Huntress (who also doesn't bother with Thou Shall Not Kill sensibilities). These ladies, while wanting to prove themselves as Gotham Heroines, don't have any of the "mentor/daddy issues" that the boys have and largely disobey Batman whenever they damn well please.

Cassandra Cain does have these issues, seeing Bruce as a surrogate father figure. She still qualifies since she is by far the deadliest combatant the Bat-family has ever known, and considers her first loyalty to be the symbol.

The Bronze AgeTeen Titans. Starfire was a hardened ex-slave from a Proud Warrior Race. Donna Troy? A literal Amazon operating under the same code as her older sister, Wonder Woman. Raven? Half-Demon with daddy issues, and some seriously scary powers. Robin (Dick Grayson) had his mentor's "do not kill" code. Cyborg was strong, but not an experienced fighter, and Changeling (Gar Logan) was only dangerous if you backed him into a corner.

In a flashback in Preacher, Herr Starr advises a class of military recruits to shoot female terrorists first; she will be more dangerous than the men since she will have had to work much harder in order to prove herself enough to join them.

In Sin City, this always happens when Dwight teams up with deadly little Miho. Dwight is a brooding noir hero who can hold his own in a fight. Miho is an extremely agile and deadly Old Town assassin, probably the most dangerous character in the books. Dwight tends to stand back while she slaughters whole groups of enemies in front of him.

Among the main and recurring characters of Diabolik, the two most dangerous are not the protagonist, a murderous thief known as the King of Terror, and inspector Ginko, the only man in the police who can match Diabolik and rightly feared by every criminal because he will arrest them, but their respective fiancees, Eva Kant and Altea: where Diabolik's revenge may be terrible, a sufficiently enraged Eva is positively sadistic (her epic revenge on her uncle for driving her mother to suicide was A Fate Worse Than Death, and after a while she started thinking about killing him because she was getting bored), and if she decides to kill you she'll make sure you suffer if she has the time; and where Ginko is constrained by the law and his own status as a police officer, Altea has no such limit, and when prompted to take lethal action by Ginko being in danger she will calmly ask her uncle the phone number of a hitman or, failing that, manipulate Diabolik into killing whoever is gunning for Ginko. Both of them are proper and nice ladies.

X-23, being the Opposite-Sex Clone of Wolverine, makes this even more noticeable, considering Logan's already one of the top badasses. While Laura's height in relation to Wolverine varies, she's consistently depicted as a slender (or at her heaviest athletic) teenage girl. She's also faster than him (not weighed down by 100lbs of adamantium), heals more quickly (her Healing Factor is not impacted by a full adamantium skeleton like Logan's), was raised from birth to be a living weapon, has extensive espionage and black ops training, was a professional assassin with the body count into the hundreds before she was thirteen, and every time she walks into a room she's already figured out several dozen ways to kill everyone inside it. And she's one of the top martial artists in the 616 'verse and may be an even better fighter than Logan.

Nemesis the Warlock: Female Warlocks are bigger, stronger, and more powerful mages than the males. The phrase itself is commonly used when referring to them.

This is also a major theme in Age of the Wolf, where the best fighters are all women and the men are mostly Action Survivors. Pretty literally among the werewolves, where the females are larger than the males (despite mammalian sexual differentiation usually being the opposite, among both humans and wolves).

Film

In Species, the decision was made to make the alien hybrid female "so she'd be more docile and controllable". A female scientist observes that "You don't get out much, do you?" The sequel subverts this, however; it turns out that a male hybrid is much more dangerous (and can turn tame female hybrids to its side pretty much just by existing). Especially since the big threat of the hybrids is that they will procreate and overthrow humanity, and that's an area in which males have greater advantages to females. When they metamorphose into their alien forms, the male one is also three times the female's size.

In The Force Awakens, Rey is better at hand to hand combat than either of her forebears. Justified in that she's spent the last 10-15 years living essentially alone in a harsh environment where being the best person in the neighborhood at hand to hand is her primary self-defense measure. And in that she's very strong in the Force.

Meta variant in The Jungle Book (2016); Kaa in this version is female and notably more competent than her 1967 film counterpart (though far less so than her book counterpart, who happens to be male—granted, Book!Kaa was basically the Yoda of snakes). Justified on a biological level, too—female snakes in real life do indeed tend to be bigger, stronger and more aggressive than their male counterparts.

Emma in The Magnificent Seven (2016) is the most deadly out of everyone in Rose Creek, being the best shooter, and this is even before the villagers were trained by the Seven.

In Judges 4, an Israelite woman named Jael invites Canaanite captain Sisera to take shelter in her tent. She gives him milk to drink, and then while he sleeps, she drives a nail through his temples. With his death, Israel is freed from Canaanite captivity.

Judith does much the same thing to an invading general, going into his tent, then giving him strong drink and, once he's gone to sleep, beheading him.

Princess Kareen realizes her son is alive and that she's been lied to. Without hesitation, she draws a nerve disrupter in a room full of soldiers and fires at the usurper who told her that her son was dead, the self-proclaimed Emperor.

Lady Macbeth. In the beginning of the play, she manipulates her husband into murdering their king and guest, something he would not have done without her prompting. Then either deconstructed or unbuilt, she descends into madness, because this was her only way to get power but she still wasn't prepared for her husband to be quite so on-board with it.

In particular amongst the witches we have Magrat Garlick, who is compared to a small furry animal in overall demeanor, and she isn't easily angered—but as Witches Abroad and Lords and Ladies prove, sometimes a cornered small furry animal turns out to be a mongoose

In Guards! Guards!, we find an unexpected example at the climax. Lady Sybil deduced the literal Dragon—the Bigger Bad ruling Ankh-Morpork through fear, is female.

The Dresden Files: Briefly mentioned in the first book, Storm Front. Harry believes that women are simply able to feel a stronger hatred toward someone than men are. It should be borne in mind that he's a bit of a sexist at first and this likely stems from the fact that he's got severe trust issues after an incident with his first love, Elaine, who he believes tried to mind control him. He also thinks that she's dead. As it turns out, she's alive and she did, sort of, but she was mind controlled at the time. But even after that, he's proven somewhat right in that we got Charity, Murphy, Mab and Lea, and Lara to prove that the ladies of the verse tend towards being more dangerous when provoked than the males.

Ellana in Pierre Bottero's Ellana, in the second part, where Rhous Ingan says that little girls (Ellana is 15) can't fight (or use bows). Later that day she shoots to death 10 Rais.

If you saw Rachel of Animorphs you would never guess that Ms. Fashion, the graceful girl who looks like a model and loves shopping is Xena, Warrior Princess, a blood-thirsty killer.

This is pretty explicitly part of the worldbuilding in the Black Jewels series by Anne Bishop: the culture is matriarchal, with males serving females as guardians and protectors; but females generally have more powerful (or at least more deadly) magic, and one character even says outright, albeit half joking, that the reason males serve is because "you're deadlier when you're angry" and at least if they go down first the males won't have to deal with them when their tempers are roused.

In Time Scout, Malcolm is frequently surprised and impressed by Margo's ferocity.

In The Dark Tower series novel "Wolves of the Calla", the Calla have a lady Oriza who is an in-universe legend. After her husband was murdered, she had a nude dinner with the conqueror. When the time was right, she took the sharpened dinner plate, threw it and took his head off.

One of the Marines in Generation Kill unconsciously echos Kipling when the women of an Iraqi town emerge from their huts, unarmed, to verbally berate the heavily armed Marines, while the men stay hidden.

"If we had to fight the women, dawg, we wouldn't stand a fuckin' chance."

In Mercedes Lackey's Owlsight, the local lord and his son head out into the field to assist in commanding the defense against a possible barbarian invasion, leaving the lady of the keep behind to oversee the village evacuees. This is for two reasons: she can keep the refugees busy helping plan her son's wedding, and she's as good or better at castle defense than her husband, "and that's why I married her." Their son is rather surprised to hear that one.

In Hit Or Myth, when told his brother is dying, Aahz doesn't believe it, because his brother is a lot tougher than him. Then his nephew claims Dad had gotten into a fight with Mom, and suddenly Aahz is very worried....

From "The Wallenstein Gambit", a short story set in the 1632 universe, after an American woman serving as his nurse helps ward off a coup attempt:

Wallenstein: A pity there are so few American women. If I had an army of you mad creatures, I could conquer the world.

Julie Mackay (nee Sims) and Gretchen Higgins (nee Richter) embody this trope. The former is a Friendly Sniper who was almost disturbingly cheerful about blowing off men's heads before she had graduated high school. The latter has become the leader of a powerful revolutionary movement, and figures prominently in the nightmares of much of Europe's nobility. She herself has yet to turn 30.

Cersei Lannister is a subversion of the trope. She think of herself as this, and is certainly more dangerous than her idiot husband, but the series is so overflowing with other manipulators of greater competence than her that she is ultimately outmatched. Note that her inferiority in this field is not implied to be due to her gender, but simply her intelligence and personality.

Ultimately subverted with Daenerys Targaryen. She's a fifteen-year-old girl without any of the martial training male nobles usually receive. To date, she has sacked three separate cities, and has a short way with those who cross her. In A Dance with Dragons, however, while it's clear she started with the best of intentions, her supporters are vastly outnumbered by those who want to overthrow her. All three cities eventually rise up in rebellion.

Played straight with Olenna "Queen of Thorns" Tyrell, and she's training her protegee/granddaughter Margaery to be the same.

In the Honor Harrington series, pirate captains are usually male. There are female pirate captains, however, and they tend to be a lot nastier than their male counterparts.

In Tunnel in the Sky, Deacon Matson goes on a rant to his students that humans are the most deadly animal in existence. He notes that "it goes double for the female".

According to Sapper, after battling the mysterious master criminal Carl Peterson through four books and finally killing him, Bulldog Drummond is challenged by Peterson's female associate Irma in the book Female of the Species (1928). Nearly forty years later, there was a film, Deadlier Than The Male (1967), in which the lead character is also called Bulldog Drummond, but he bears little relation to the original.

In the Emberverse, the single deadliest warrior in the Portland Protective Association is Tiphaine d'Ath. She is strong, lethally quick, clever, and an absolute Combat Pragmatist. According to her, the fact that she doesn't waste time posturing and flourishing, as a male noble would, is a tremendous advantage.

Urban Dragon is dominated by these. Leadership all levels is mixed-gender, but the women will always be the scariest by a mile.

Small, harmless-looking Arkay is constantly being assaulted by men who think they can take advantage of her, only to beat them within an inch of their lives

Women usually end up more vicious in similar roles than men, particularly vampires Darla and Drusilla. Note also that Angelus originally got in touch with his sadistic side just to impress Darla.

There's a reason Slayers are always women. Dudes have traditionally stayed on the sidelines, from the Shadow Men all the way down to their descendants, the Watcher's council.

Burn Notice describes Fiona as a "trigger happy ex-girlfriend" in the opening narration. Michael is no slouch himself, but he tries to maintain diplomacy whereas Fiona is a little more eager to jump straight to the "shooting and C4" part of the evening.

Chinese Paladin 3: A running theme in this show is women being willing to strike first, fight dirty, and take no prisoners if they or their loved ones are threatened. A prime example is Zixuan's setting a monastery on fire as a distraction when her lover is arrested.

Features the gangster and slum lord Datak Tarr, and his loving wife Stahma... who quickly demonstrates that she is far more cunning and ruthless than her husband. She talks her husband out of killing the entire family of local mine owner Rafe McCawley by pointing out that their son Alak loves Christie McCawley - who would inherit the mines if her father and brother were to have a tragic mining accident.

The first two adult companions were Ian Chesterton and Barbara Wright. That said, while Ian had his awesome moments, Barbara was such a badass it's a common fan joke that the show could have been renamed "Why Barbara is Awesome", and no one would have noticed.

Also notable is Fourth Doctor companion Leela, a Noble Savage and Knife Nut the Doctor sometimes struggled to physically restrain.

A lot of the culprits of the week in Elementary are well-mannered, respectable women who plan and carry out subtle, elaborate murders - and if not for Holmes and Watson's intervention, they'd probably have never been caught. And then there's the series' take on Moriarty.

Generation Kill the series: One of the Marines says this when he observes the women of a town doing backbreaking labor to clear the streets and their yards of debris, while the men lounged on the lawns smoking:

"If we had to fight the women, dawg, we wouldn't stand a fuckin' chance."

iCarly: "iMake Sam Girlier": Sam's new crush says "And even though I haven't known Sam for too long, I know that if I ever get in a fight and I can have either the football team or Sam back me up, I'm going with Sam."

Chuck: Threatening the title character will get you beaten up and arrested by Casey. It will get you killed outright by Sarah.

The Prisoner is notable for the three episodes in which Number Two is female being the ones in which Number Six ends up most defeated and the closest to being mentally broken.

Revolution: Rachel Matheson. She may not look like Action Girl material at all, and in fact seems willing to put up with loads of hardships. But the minute her kids or her life get threatened...well, there's nothing that she won't do to ensure survival. Her former colleague Dr. Bradley Jaffe in "Kashmir" and Sergeant Will Strausser in "Nobody's Fault But Mine" learned this at the cost of their lives.

Clark Kent may be a Physical God, but being such a boy scout, he might just be less dangerous than Lana Lang and Chloe Sullivan. Lana enacted a complex and vicious plan of revenge after Lex Luthor faked her pregnancy, which includes beating up and imprisoning Lionel. Chloe delivered an If You Ever Do Anything To Hurt Him speech to Lana with a very convincing tone; if you are the week's bad guy who tried to expose Clark to the world and she is under the influence of Brainiac, you won't live long enough to regret it.

The original Green Skinned Space Babes, the Orion slavegirls, are far deadlier than the males and are the true rulers of their world thanks to their pheromones.

According to Klingon creation myth the first Klingon was male, and the second was female and stronger because the gods had a better idea what they were doing now. They fought for a time, until the female convinced the male that together they would be strong enough to destroy the gods themselves. Which they then did. This story is recited at Klingon weddings as the ideal, just before the husband's friends attack the pair to give them some Battle Couple cred.

That '70s Show: The guys taunt Donna and Jackie with claims that while men can entertain themselves with play-fighting, girls get too angry and begin to fight for real. Cue the girls beginning a nice, playful fight that quickly descends to barbed words and legitimate violence.

The Investigation Discovery channel has an entire series dedicated to women who murdered their husbands called "The Wife Did It".

Music

Space's Signature Song, 'Female Of The Species', which takes its title from the Kipling poem above.

Emilie Autumn's "Fight Like a Girl" is a call to arms for this archetype of girl, in which she champions a Roaring Rampage of Revenge against 49% of the world's populationnote surprisingly not misandry since she has lines that refer to men as allies - it's more about those who are misogynist and saying they are the outnumbered ones, based on ruthlessness as well as superior numbers.

It's so easy to kill This I learned from watching you If I have to, I will It's not pretty but it's true

The Walker Brothers sang an ode to the poem, though it's more playful than anything.

Male Locust Drones in Gears of War are human-sized and carry guns. Female Drones — a.k.a. Berserkers — are enormous hulking beasts with bulletproof armour plating for skin, blind, and fuelled by Unstoppable Rage making them kill human and Locust alike. Normally the only way to even hurt them is by breaking out the Kill Sat.

Oddly enough, invoked by Atton Rand in the second Knights of the Old Republic. He mentions that Sith men are bad enough, but Sith women are much worse.

Aglaia Lilich from Pathologic. Despite being neither crazy nor blood-thristy, unlike many other known Inquisitors, she is still more willing than any other character in the game to use extemely brutal means in order to stop Sand Plague. There is an extremly striking contrast between her and another powerful figure in the game - Alexander "General Ash" Block, who, unlike her is a deeply honorable Officer And Gentleman, and is incredibly humane for war veteran.

FemShep applies when compared to her male squadmates, potentially lampshaded by Wrex's "Who'd win in a fight?" elevator chitchat. Does not apply when compared with MaleShep as they are equals by design.

In Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time, there are two Thwomps that the Bros. encounter on top of Yoshi Mountain, Mr. Thwomp and Ms. Thwomp. Mr. Thwomp does nothing but make passive-aggressive taunts at you and help you throughout the following stage. Ms. Thwomp, however, challenges you to a full-on boss fight against her, and it's certainly not an easy fight.

In about three of the Deception series of games (known as the Kagero series in Japan) features a female main character who is not an Action Girl by any stretch of imagination, but instead was given a castle full of traps, and a complementary Trap Master traits to go along with it. Chaining insane, bloody and gory combos with your ever-increasingly lethal and convoluted trap sequence is par for the course. The oddly-named Trapt (Kagero II: Dark Illusion in Japan) has a Princess doing this.

Olga from Asura's Wrath is much more vindictive and cruel than most of the other Deities, being merely subservient to deus out of true admiration then true subservience most of the time. Subverted when around Asura, especially when he turns into his berserker form, which makes her high tail it and try to use their ultimate weapon on him. She also outlives Deus and tries to kill Mithra when Deus dies.

In Fallout: New Vegas any of the female companions classify. Veronica and her power fist are much more dangerous than most of what the Brotherhood has to offer and Cass... Let's just say she one ups her father on that front. Of note is also the female NCR Ranger, Stella, captured by the Legion. Forced to fight in the arena, she's been tearing up hardened legionaries with her bare hands ever since.

Happens twice in E.V.O.: Search for Eden. The first time it's the Queen Bee, the final boss of chapter 2. The second time it's the Female Yeti, the final boss of Chapter 4. The reason that they attack you is because you defeated their mates.

Pokémon has the Meowstic species, which exhibits such a high level of Bizarre Sexual Dimorphism that the two genders have different movepools. The males have primarily support movepools. The females, on the other hand, have primarily offensive movepools (through level up only though). The female's hidden ability (Competitive) is also offensive-oriented compared to the male's (Prankster), but otherwise, it's downplayed; their stats as well their movepools by TMs as well as from Espurr's are still the same.

Combee double-subverts this. While the female is no stronger than the male, it is the only gender that can evolve into Vespiquen. Likewise, female Salandits are the only ones who can evolve to Salazzle.

Monster Hunter zig-zags with various related-species and subspecies. The female Rathian, for instance, is often introduced to players sooner than the male Rathalos, and Rathian does not fly around nearly as much or use her fire breath as vigorously. The rather unnerving Diablos species, however, as the even scarier Black Diablos subspecies, which consists entirely of female Diablos who are in heat.

One of the playable choices among the "fans" in Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number are the brother/sister pair Alex and Ash. Ash, the brother, uses firearms like a reasonable person (reasonable by psychotic killer standards, anyway). Alex, on the other hand, opts for a chainsaw.

In the True Pacifist route of Undertale, Toriel effortlessly blows her husband Asgore away with a fireball (although they have equal stats). She then proceeds to chastise him that if he really wanted to free the monsters so badly, he should have used his first human soul to get out of the mountain and killed some people himself rather than playing Orcus on His Throne because he was too indecisive. This is the same Toriel who doted on you at the beginning of the game and seems to be in favor of peace between humans and monsters overall, but Asgore's perceived cowardice disgusts her even more than the fact that he was willing to murder humans.

Grace from El Goonish Shive used to have only two modes: complete pacifism and Unstoppable Flying Clawball Of Doom. However, this may have more to do with being a hybrid of a herbivore (squirrel) with a really monstrous alien while having rather limited experience. Later martial artist friends, including ladies, convinced her that it's not always a good idea and she got to learn more controlled ways of violence.

Web Original

Demise, the super-assassin from the Global Guardians PBEM Universe is the deadliest fighter on the planet not because she's superhumanly strong or because she's superhumanly fast, but rather because she knows how to turn anything — anything at all — into a deadly weapon, and can figure out ways around your defenses in seconds.

The Nostalgia Chick might be as pathetic and miserable as the Critic, but her temper is scarier, she can worm her way out of trouble easier, she's stronger than him despite their height difference, and she'll stoop to any level to get what she wants.

Powerful parahumans of both genders abound in Worm, but the specific subset of ruthless Well Intentioned Extremists who are willing to trample the lives and free wills of others for the sake of the greater good is a very small group of parahumans, several of whom are opposed to the others, and all of whom are female.

While there are very competent male Fire Benders and fighters in her family, Princess Azula plots, schemes, and ruthlessly manipulates others to do her dirty work, before finally bringing out the lightning. And she puts even Daddy to shame with all of her machinations, murder and mayhem. Best displayed by the fact that she actually managed to kill Aang (though he did get better).

Katara can also have shades of this. While she doesn't have the raw power of Aang, she can be downright terrifying when angry. Most notable when she's on the receiving end of chauvinistic comments (things tend to break around her) and when hunting for her mother's killer (where she used bloodbending).

Even the Avatars show shades of this. The female Avatars all show signs of being fiercer than the male Avatars are — after all, it's Yangchen and Kyoshi (both female) who outright tell Aang to kill Ozai, whereas Kuruk and Roku (both male) use vague "be decisive, choose your destiny" advice. Kyoshi had such a fierce reputation that she's (falsely) on record as a murderer. (In reality, The Dog Shot First and was already dying, and Kyoshi merely refused to save him. But as Kyoshi herself pointed out, dead is dead.)

The Legend of Korra follows suit like its predecessor series in regards to some of its female fighters.

Adventure Time: The Ice Queen is much more competent than the Ice King. Justified, as it's a gender-flipped fanfiction of the latter, so he probably made her competent regardless of her gender.

In an Episode of Time Squad, the heroes have to help henpecked husband Napoleon Bonaparte sneak away from his wife to do some late-night conquering. Eventually they're caught by her and, being the "fiery frenchwoman" that she is, she gets so mad that she singlehandedly obliterates Napoleon's army. They then decide to become conquering partners together.

Lord Hater is the Big Bad of "Wander Over Yonder" until the Dominator shows up. She gets her jollies by destroying every planet in the galaxy. After she's destroyed everything except for a tiny little planet where the heroes are plotting to defeat her, she starts to feel very sad and depressed...because there's nothing left to destroy. She's so evil that during the series finale Lord Hater teams up with Wander and his friends to defeat her because she's destroyed the galaxy he wanted to conquer. After she's finally defeated she almost seems to want to be Wander's friend and become a good guy for a few moments but then she decides she'd rather storm off in a huff instead.

In "The Amazing World of Gumball", one episode revolves around Gumball's neighbor's wife being a total sociopath who enjoys making everyone around her miserable. When Gumball and his brother Darwin try to find out why, their neighbor Mr. Robinson speaks a few lines of dialogue from Batman where he says that "some people aren't after anything logical. Sometimes they just want to watch the world burn."

Real Life

British General Lord Charles Cornwallis is quoted as saying: "We may destroy all the men in America, and we shall still have all we can do to defeat the women."

Wendi Deng Murdoch protected her husband from a dangerous pie-thrower by going for his throat.

Female domestic abusers of male partners are statistically more likely to use weapons. Of course, this makes sense given the strength difference.

In military basic training, female drill sergeants seem far meaner than male drill sergeants. And if they're also short, well...

Common among any wild animal with Mama Bear tendencies. Indeed, said Mama Bear tendencies may be the reason this form of sexual dimorphism exists in the first place; the female of the species is usually the one carrying the young before their actual birth (even egg-laying species have to wait for the eggs to develop within them before laying them), and as such is the one who is most vital to their offspring's existence. If the male is either absent or dies protecting his brood then the loss is not as great, but if the pregnant female dies, so does her offspring and the next generation is over before it even begins.

Spiders. Females are larger, more aggressive, and have more potent venom than males, and are prone to eating males after mating or if they don't feel like mating. There are a few exceptions:

Male diving bell spiders are larger than females.

Male Allocosa brasiliensis wolf spiders will eat females they encounter who are too young or too old to bear young.

Male Sydney funnel web spiders are more aggressive and have more potent venom than females. In fact, bites by females are hardly ever fatal while bites by males usually require anti-venom. However, males still risk getting eaten by females.

Sharks. Males are much smaller.

Snakes. For the same reason.

Eagles, or any other bird of prey. To give some context, a surefire way to figure out if a baby eagle is male or female is to wait until it grows up. If it's bigger than its father before it reaches full adulthood, it's a girl.

Once thought to be true of the eagle's forefathers note or perhaps foremothers in this case, the theropod dinosaurs. Nowadays, we know that there isn't any evidence for this, but at the same time there isn't any evidence against it either (and it's not really something we can learn from fossils anyway), so the possibility is still there.

Spotted Hyenas; while the species as a whole is pretty tough (they've been seen hunting on broken legs, are capable of eating even the horns and bones of prey animals, etc.) the females are larger, more aggressive, and are dominant over males to the point that an adult male may have lower status than the alpha female's infant daughters.

The females actually have an enlarged clitoris, which they use to urinate, mate, and even give birth with. Did we also mention that it closely resembles a penis? Yikes!

Female mosquitoes are the only ones that drink blood. While this obviously makes them more of a pest than males, it also makes them very deadly as they are the ones that carry and pass diseases such as Malaria, West Nile, and Yellow Fever.

When militants came to Rukhsana Kauser's home to kidnap her, she was hidden so they started hitting people with their rifles. She took an axe from her hiding place under the bed and smashed the commander in the head, then grabbed his AK-47 and tossed another to her brother, and with the rest of the family drove them off and headed to the police station. She has since received lots of attention, several awards, several more attacks, and become a police officer.

While male lions are pretty fierce and threatening, and larger and stronger than the females, from an animals point of view (e.g. a zebra) they are actually less dangerous as male lions are used to having the females in the pride hunt for them. If a male lion is ousted by another and has to fend for themselves, they tend to make poor hunters because of lack of practice, and may starve to death.

Pick a martial art. Any martial art. Go into a dojo for that martial art and watch their sparring class. Now observe. The women are often more aggressive than the men.

It is often noted with armies in history that when they are occupying a foreign hostile territory, the ultimate nightmare is for a soldier to be seriously wounded, alone and surrounded by female civilians. In short, they will get their knives or similar blades and kill that soldier slowly. Justifiable, however, because historically Rape, Pillage, and Burn has been standard operating procedure for all armies. Why this would make women particularly eager to kill any soldier they can get alone hardly needs elaborating.

Female wasps, bees, and ants are the only ones with the stingers. Males are actually short-lived and physically constructed for the sole purpose of serving as breeding tools; often, the male's genitals are derived from the structures as the female's stinger. After breeding season is done, the males (drones) are useless to the colony, and are driven out to die … if not killed on the spot and their corpses disposed of with the colony's other refuse. Assuming they don't die in the process, often in biologically horrendous ways - some species of bee have males that die from their gonads exploding.

There's a species of firefly where the males have wings and the female don't, but the females use their lights to lure the males down from the air so they can eat them.

During the siege of the Hungarian castle and town of Eger (by the Ottomans) in 1552, the men did most of the hand-to-hand fighting, but it was the women who poured the cauldrons of boiling oil, tar, and any other nasty liquid they got their hands on. Demonstrated succintly in a Hungarian musical made from one of the novels written about the siege, where the women of Eger get their own rocking song. The chorus translated goes something like this: "Fire, let there be burning fire, let [our liquids] boil and brew, and the attackers will pay, because I'll chase them off to Hell! Fly on a black cloud, oh hot death, Hellfire awaits them [the attackers], let them run away from here, blood-soaked! No weak missus is she, put the wooden spoon and headscarf away, the brave women of Eger grab swords! We have to act, and not cry, up, to the bastion, to fight, kill the Turks, we have to win here, today!"

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